Johann Kaspar Lavater Quotes

Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.

All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move.

In the local state school I attended in England, I saw and heard far more awareness of where a person stood in the social hierarchy than I had ever heard stateside.

I've been with all walks of life... All people from all status.

Growing up in inner-city neighborhoods, there's a particular structure, which I'm sure is true of most social contexts. The type of person you are determines the role you play.

Being a posh actor in England you cannot escape the class-typing from whatever side you look at it.

Americans have so far put up with inequality because they felt they could change their status. They didn't mind others being rich, as long as they had a path to move up as well. The American Dream is all about social mobility in a sense - the idea that anyone can make it.

It is impossible, in our condition of Society, not to be sometimes a Snob.

The idealists dream and the dream is told, and the practical men listen and ponder and bring back the truth and apply it to human life, and progress and growth and higher human ideals come into being and so the world moves ever on.

And understand: class differences will not save you.

If you look at Charles Dickens's time, there were so many different levels of society and everybody understood their place in it, it was that complex and simple. I'm not sure we have that now.

In America everybody is of the opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors, for, from the time of Jefferson onward, the doctrine that all men are equal applies only upwards, not downwards.

English people are so trapped in this class paradigm.

The hierarchy of class in London was rigid. It was like a religion. It still is to a certain extent.

It is the dissimilarities and inequalities among men which give rise to the notion of honor; as such differences become less, it grows feeble; and when they disappear, it will vanish too.

For the metropolis presents the peculiar conditions which are revealed to us as the opportunities and the stimuli for the development of both these ways of allocating roles to men.

How rich our German life is compared to France or England: what an abundance of social types and customs with completely different origins... Germany is a world, whereas England and France, with their stereotypically divided three social classes, are but enlarged villages... what a stage for a Balzac.

Growth is a panacea for many ills in society; not entirely, but many.

Progress is measured by the degree of differentiation within a society.

Of course the lower classes have always felt downtrodden and aspired to a better life. But there is this theory that people respond to a class structure in England - there was a time when people knew who they were and knew whom they served and as long as management wasn't abusive, it was a good life for people.

Everyone has class, one class or another.

For no continuity of social act is possible without a corresponding social status and the many different kinds of act required in an industrial state, with its high degree of specialization, make for corresponding classification of status.

I really do think the things that make our society what it is are under threat. It should be about everyone having the potential to be what they're going to be.

In America everybody is of the opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors.

The middle class is always a firm champion of equality when it concerns a class above it; but it is its inveterate foe when it concerns elevating a class below it.